Check it out! It’s the new iPhone 8! It’s thinner, faster, has a better battery life, has better cameras and even a full panel screen! How exciting! Except we don’t really know if that’s the iPhone 8. It’s really a leaked picture of what looks like the Foxconn factory (Apple’s Chinese manufacturer).
Let’s be real here though, no one really cares about what the new iPhone will look like. What features it will add or remove, how big the screen is, how much faster it is. These are only relevant criteria for someone seriously shopping for a new cellular device. When it comes to Apple, they can make a brick with their logo on it that evangelists will be more than happy to wait in line for a week prior to launch just to acquire some sweet Apple masonry.
As an avid Apple user (both for my personal phone and work computer), I may come off as a bit of a hypocrite but hear me out.
Apple and Android over the years have modified their UI, buttons, features, graphics, screen sizes to copy each other and stay competitive. Nowadays, it’s quite difficult to really discern between the two smartphone giants. Apple started out by priding themselves on “being different” but in 2017 it’s all the same junk.
Remember the good old days where you could just replace your phone’s $25 battery and make it good as new, able to run for many more years to come? I know I do. Phones are intentionally built nowadays to be more and more difficult for third party companies and people to attempt self-repairs. They are built in a sleek one-piece fashion with microscopic specialized screws that are very difficult to open. And even if you do manage to open one, good luck resealing the waterproof seal and not damaging any of the extremely sensitive connectors and chips.
The repairs done by the manufacturers are rarely covered under warranty as a physically damaged screen somehow voids your warranty for a faulty battery or connector. So they charge you a price so ridiculous that you would rather just trade up and get the new iPhone. Isn’t planned obsolescence just the best?
I know what you’re thinking at this point. “I’ve read through most of this so called “speculation” article and I see no speculation for the new iPhone!”
It’s quite easy to speculate with Apple. I mean, this is the 10th iPhone. The routine is always the same. Tim Cook will start the keynote with some pseudo-inspirational, avant-garde video about “being different”. He will go over how amazing Apple’s sales were over the last annum and try to announce some boring new products that no one cares to buy any more like iPods or Magic Mice. Then he’ll announce the new iPhone, the crowd will go wild and you will consider harvesting your kidney so you can afford it. Then a month will go by (Apple intentionally does this to build up massive hype). Then, the only people who will acquire it the first day are those who stood in line for a week or those well off enough to buy it from the people who stood in line all week at a 300% markup. The rest of the world will go on about their day and normal people will acquire them several months later when the demand subsides.
So to my kind readers and tech enthusiasts, I apologize for not providing any real credible speculation for the new iPhone. My point all along was, does it really matter?
